


Dear, Departed

by Ms_Informed



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Canon Compliant, Families of Choice, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Pre-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Star Wars Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-07
Updated: 2018-02-07
Packaged: 2019-03-06 01:04:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13400136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ms_Informed/pseuds/Ms_Informed
Summary: Rey is lonely, not alone.





	Dear, Departed

Rey dreams of endless bodies of water and wakes up, her throat parched, lips cracked. She reaches for the bottle she keeps by her bed roll.

“Don’t drink too fast,” says Chirrut, sitting nearby, legs crossed and back against the wall. “You’ll make yourself sick.”

Rey rubs her eyes and forces herself to take small sips.

She is eight years old.

* * *

Rey doesn’t remember the early days; the time before Jakku. Not really. She remembers what her hand felt like in someone else’s, skin against skin, and how, for the first time, she had felt small as she watched a transporter fly upwards and away, a speck of grey swallowed up by endless blue.

She remembers that she was left behind and that she was told that they would come back for her.

It takes her month to shake the constant ache in her gut. An emptiness that no amount of food can fill. Her eyes feel sore all the time, like she is a breath away from tears.

“Keep quiet,” Jyn tells her. “Don’t cause any trouble. Watch. Listen. Learn. Make them earn your trust.”

Rey has trouble with that last one. It’s not in her nature to be suspicious. Helping out is easier. She joins the older women when they clean the junk that’s brought in from endless wastes of Jakku and studies the way traders exchange food rations for twisted pieces of metal and old wiring.

She makes herself useful so they keep feeding her even after the money that she had been left with runs out.

“Good girl,” says Baze, voice gruff, but not so much she can’t hear his approval.

* * *

Rey doesn’t think she saw them, in the blurred days of before, but she can’t be sure because she has no memories of meeting them. No faded recollection of surprise or fear; just the knowledge that the people she saw were real and only she could see them.

* * *

“They’re coming back right? My family?”

Cassian sits beside her, mirroring her position, arms wrapped around his legs. It’s dark, but the corridors of the compound are filled with sound as labourers shift supplies and load cargo onto transporters. 

They are sitting in an alcove, little more than a crack in the foundations, a hollowed out space in the thick walls, big enough for Rey and a regular sized humanoid. It’s her space and she guards it jealously from the other residents, using boxes and other debris to cover the entrance.

She waits while Cassian shifts; he doesn’t make a sound but she feels it all the same. He doesn’t like to lie, she knows that about him. Can see it in the way his mouth tightens and the lines around his eyes get deeper. His focus settles on Jyn, who standing across the hall from where they are curled up. Their lookout and guard. 

Jyn and Cassian usually arrive together and Rey has noticed the way they watch each other, like they are searching for answers or comfort or maybe something else entirely.

“They told you to wait,” he says eventually, “so that is what you must do.”

Rey nods and tries not to wish for things she can’t have.

She doesn’t ask about her family again.

* * *

They don’t always look the same. Sometimes Padmé appears in gowns of deep blue, flowers in her hair and skin so pale it seems to shine. Other times she is dressed in tight clothing, cheeks flushed and hair tied back. 

Cassian and Jyn appear in neatly pressed uniforms and in clothing streaked with mud and ash, looking tired and broken, cheeks stained with tears or blood. Occasionally they burn with a light so bright she can barely look at them. 

Baze and Chirrut are teenagers one day and middle aged and battle-scared the next. Obi Wan too, who always wears brown robes but can age twenty or forty years in a matter of minutes. Yoda rarely visits and when he does he always looks slightly different. New robes, fresh lines marking his face or a shift in the colouring of his skin, the sharpness of his gaze.

Bodhi is the only one who never changes.

“This is how I like myself best,” Bodhi says, when she asks him about it one day.

Sometimes they are so faint they seem to shimmer, like the air over a hot stone. Other times they seem so real she wants to reach out and touch them.

(She never does.)

* * *

Rey grows up on the fringes of the trading post community as she tries to make a space for herself without risking the safety the compound offers. It’s lonely and whenever possible she retreats to the quiet places she’s found or takes on the work no one else wants, cleaning out the septic system or looking after the bloggins and luggabeasts.

It’s here, caught in-between the chaos of the living and the silence of the dead, that she receives her education. 

Padme teaches her Aurebesh, endlessly patient as Rey scratches symbols in the dust of the stable floor; whispering words to her in Huttese, Mando’a and Jawese. Rey listens carefully to Padme, who never smiles and whose eyes are always sad. When her hair starts to get too long, it’s Padme who shows her how to twist and secure it, behind her head.

When Padme isn’t around Yoda will talk to her in the guttural tongue of Shyriiwook, never bothering with actual instruction, but teaching her all the same.

“Wait a minute,” she says one day, arms thick with black mud all the way up to her elbows. “Are you using the proper tense?”

Yoda doesn’t smile, but it’s easy to tell when he’s amused because he sort of trembles all over.

“Tell me, you will,” he says, disappearing while she’s still frowning.

Baze demonstrates the best way to fold her hand into a fist. How to move her body with strength and confidence.

“Never do in three moves what you can do in one,” he tells her.

Chirrut teaches her how to listen; footfalls against sand, the rustle of cloth; to feel the air moving around herself and others.

“You are one with the force,” he tells her, “and the force is with you.”

Rey tries to follow his elegant movements and trips slightly.

“I don’t know what that means,” she says, distracted and frustrated.

“It’s a prayer,” says Baze, and his voice is rougher than normal and when Rey looks up she sees that it’s not her he’s looking at, but Chirrut.

“It’s a promise,” Chirrut says, and she can’t tell which one of them he’s talking to.

* * *

She’s fascinated by the land speeders the scavengers use and quickly figures out that they are willing to pay for someone to clean and maintain their vehicles. 

“Not much,” says Chirrut, head titled to the side when he hears the rate. “But even a few credits can mean the difference between a full belly and an empty one.”

Under the watchful gaze of Cassian and Bodhi she figures out the engineering, running her fingers over the wires and nodes, learning to repair old panels and replace burnt out parts. 

“You’re a natural,” says Bodhi, smiling at her when she gets something right the first time.

“Now,” says Cassian, “what are you going to do about the acceleration?”

They promise her that one day, when she has access to a transporter or fighter ship they’ll teach her about navigation and piloting.

“It’s the only place you can be free,” Bodhi tells her, looking up at the night sky, when she asks, “out there, amongst the stars.” 

“It might save your life one day,” is all Cassian will say; and his face is sad like Padme’s sometimes, especially when he is with Jyn, and Rey can’t explain why the way they look at each makes her chest feel hollow and her eyes sting.

* * *

Obi Wan doesn’t say much when he visits, always late at night when she wakes from visions of salt water and blistering heat. He sits quietly and waits with her, while she chokes back sobs and clutches at the blankets over her knees.

Sometimes, when her throat burns and she can barely see through her tears he’ll start talking, low and soothing. Stories about the Jedi and other myths and legends.

He never talks about himself.

* * *

Baze is the one who suggests that she join one of the scavenger groups. Rey counts the marks she’s made on the wall in one of her hideouts and thinks that she might be twelve years old.

“Good money in it,” he says, watching as she shakes the sand out of her boots after a day of cleaning. “If you can stand the work.”

There are fifteen other people in the room and not one of them sees the warrior sitting next to Rey. 

The scavengers laugh at her at first, when she approaches them at the end of their shift.

“Don’t let them scare you,” whispers Chirrut. “Stand your ground.”

After a few days of asking around two of them come to her. A female Aqualish with vibrantly green skin and humanoid with dark grey hair and a missing eye.

“You’re looking for work,” says the female, in human standard.

“Never let them know how much you want something,” says Jyn, circling the scavengers, eyes narrowed and mouth a hard line.

What Rey wants is her family, but it’s not possible to chase something and wait for it all at the same time.

“I might be,” says Rey, making sure she doesn’t sound too eager.

“Well,” says the humanoid. “Let see what you’ve got.”

* * *

The first week is the hardest. Rey joins Mashra, Ivano and their small group when they travel to the starship graveyard. The sight of the imperial warships and the other detritus steals her breath away. 

There’s a beauty, a majesty in the sight of these old behemoths that she hadn’t expected. A melancholy too. How many, she thinks, are buried here with the wreckage of that old war?

“Long enough, peace never is,” says Yoda from his position on top of the nearest luggabeast; he looks smaller than usual; a mouse amongst giants.

The others are there too, quiet, tears running down their faces, eyes wide and expressions rigid. She can feel their grief, thickening the already humid air. 

She wonders if their bodies are here, underneath twisted metal and millions grains of sand. She wonders if they weep for themselves or others.

It’s a relief, when half an hour later Cassian stops her from disconnecting a communications system in hals-decent condition.

“It will sell for more in one piece,” he tells her, and although his voice shakes his hands are steady.

* * *

Rey never asks them how they died.

It doesn’t seem right.

* * *

At the outpost, traders exchange tall tales over too many drinks. She overhears them talking about ghosts one day, while she does her best to remove the rust from her latest haul. Horror stories of possession and madness that make her roll her eyes and bite down her tongue.

One of them catches her expression and takes offence anyway, lip curling up, over his teeth.

“You think you’re better than us?”

“I’m not afraid of the dead,” she says, tilting her chin up because Jyn taught her how to go unnoticed but Padme taught her never to bow down or back away from bullies.

The trader and his friends snort and make dismissive gestures, too lazy or drunk to want to start something. 

“Nicely done,” says Cassian, sounding almost amused, his shoulder inches away from hers.

Rey bares her teeth and continues to work, letting Chirrut’s gentle humming drown out her anger and exhaustion.

* * *

“Not that one,” Baze says, when she is looking for the materials she’s gathered for a potential weapon.

Beside him Chirrut tuts gently. 

“Don’t interfere,” he says. “The force will guide her.”

Chirrut talks about the force a lot. Base shakes his head, always unimpressed, and points to a long rod.

“The force is telling me that you should fight with a quarter staff,” he says. “Better reach, more leverage.”

Chirrut smiles at Baze and then Rey. The metal is cool and smooth beneath her fingers.

“I can make this work,” she says, like she has a choice.

* * *

They all teach her how to fight, in one way or another. How to wield a weapon like it’s an extension of her body, how to read the environment, how to grasp any advantage she can get.

“People will always underestimate you,” Jyn tells her, “especially men.”

“Fight dirty,” says Cassian, “in battle there is no honour, only those who walk away and those who don’t.”

“Don’t rely on what you see,” says Chirrut, “your eyes may deceive you.”

“Fighting isn’t always about winning,” Padme tells her, watching as Rey takes apart and then reassembles a blaster. 

“Trust your instincts,” says Obi Wan, his face turned away, “and remember that not all battles are worth fighting.”

Bodhi shows her the gun turrets on the desolate ships that take up so much of the wasteland on Jakku. Points out all the mechanisms and explains how the systems work.

“Do what you think is right,” he tells her afterwards. “Even when it hurts. There are worse things than dying.”

“Don’t tell her that,” says Baze, scowling at Bodhi, who looks unapologetic. 

“Learn it, you must,” says Yoda. “Or consequences you will suffer.”

* * *

Rey jumps and slips while scavenging for parts inside an old, derelict x-wing, hand spasming instead of gripping at the makeshift handheld she had tried to grab. 

She falls badly, and dislocates her shoulder. Gritting her teeth against the pain, Rey tries to catch her breath.

“Impatient, you are,” says Yoda, looking down at her.

“Not helpful,” Rey says, because he never is.

“Rude you are, too,” says Yoda, wandering off, out of her line of sight.

“It’s okay,” says Jyn, appearing suddenly, Cassian behind her. “We’ve got this.”

Rey blinks back tears and she is lucky, she knows, to have so many friends when so many others have no one, but on days like this she misses human touch; the fading memory she has of skin on skin and the trust that comes with that contact. 

Jyn and Cassian hover close, carefully talking her through how to reset her shoulder, their voices familiar and the best sort of comfort Rey has.

She is sixteen years old.

* * *

Six months later Rey gets into a knockout brawl with three traders at the outpost. They accuse her of cheating them, of hoarding the best sites and try to take her rations. They want to know where she’s been scavenging and how.

Instead of an answer she leaves them with two broken bones, cracked ribs and a concussion. 

She doesn’t need Baze and Cassian to tell her that it’s time to leave. For most of her life the mixture of traders, scavengers and merchants at the outpost have barely tolerated her presence. She has never been welcome and these days the looks directed at her are more often hostile than not.

Rey packs up the small stash of belongings, hidden in one of her old refuges, and strikes out during the night. 

Chirrut walks beside her and she mouths along as he prays.

* * *

“You won’t always be alone,” Bodhi says, back against the hull of the AT-AT unit where she now lives, wrists balanced loosely on his knees.

Rey wants to protest that she isn’t alone, but they both know better. She read once that humans can die from touch starvation, but she’s still alive so she guesses that it can’t be true. She still misses it though.

“How do you know?”

“I was alone too,” he says, and Bodhi is always smiling at her; the only one of her friends who doesn’t seem weighed down, like he is carrying too much in his head and his heart. “I was so alone I ached from it. But then I met someone, and that led me to more people and for the first time in my life I had a family.”

“You’re my family,” she says, running her hands through the sand, thinking about all the years she’s spent waiting and the voices that have guided her; offered her balance and love.

“I know,” he says. “But one day, your family will be bigger. Brighter. Warmer.”

“Don’t-”

She can’t finish the sentence; feeling selfish and foolish and terrified all at once. Bodhi looks at her, gentle and kind, like he already knows what she wants to say.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t leave,” she says, blinking rapidly and frowning at the bruise on her knee, trying to drown out her fear with irritation. “Please.”

And suddenly they are all there; every single one of her ghosts, surrounding her.

“Never,” says Bodhi, his tone serious and Rey feels brave enough to look at him now, to look at all of them; her strange little family. “Even if you can’t see us, we will always be with you.”

Rey nods and wonders if they can hear in the way her heart beats how she wants them to stay, and stay, and _stay_.

* * *

(She’ll find out later, much later, that Bodhi had less than a week of that feeling, of belonging, before they all died and she will burn with anger and grief before she remembers that they found each other again, in the afterlife, and it’s not enough, it’s never enough, but Rey knows the value of taking what you can get.)

* * *

It’s Cassian who leads her to the droid. It’s a small, round thing; a model she’s not familiar with. It’s making distressed noises and trying desperately to roll away from the scavengers attempting to catch it.

“I had a friend,” says Cassian, “long ago. He was a droid. I still miss him.”

Rey still knows so little about their lives. About who they were when they were alive and real.

“Hey,” she yells out, unhooking her quarterstaff. “Let them go.”

* * *

That night her room is filled with the droid’s excited chatter.

_Not droid, BB-8_ , they correct her when she asks them to move.

“Okay,” she says, feeling a little off balance; BB-8 keeps gently nudging her, solid and warm against her calves.

“See,” says Bodhi. “I told you.”

* * *

A day later she meets Finn, who won’t stop taking her hand and she was wrong. Her memories are not anything like the reality of having someone’s fingers tangled up in hers. His skin in slick with sweat and sand and far hotter than the air around them.

“Stop holding my hand,” she snaps.

“Sorry,” says Finn, looking apologetic and terrified and very much like he was the one seeking comfort, not offering it. 

“Be nice,” says Padme, “he’s terrified.”

“Fine,” says Rey, taking Finn’s hand and pulling him into a run, feeling what she doesn’t quite know. “Let’s go.”

* * *

“Dampeners off,” says Cassian.

“Thrusters,” says Bodhi.

“I know,” she yells, banging her fist against the control panel of the trash ship they’ve been forced to use, gratified when the engine rumbles to life beneath her.

“I didn’t say anything,” Finn shouts, unaware that the comms are on and he’s essential screaming into her ear.

“I know,” she mutters, before hitting the acceleration.

* * *

“This one is trouble,” says Obi Wan, looking old and almost amused as he stands next to Han Solo in the worn interior of the _Millennium Falcon_.

Rey doesn’t care; this is the legendary scavenger and rebel who completed the Kessel run in fourteen parsecs. And she’s been piloting his _ship_.

“Twelve,” says Han, wearing an expression that suggests that he’d very much like to kick her and Finn into the black. 

“Right,” says Finn, slightly awkward, like he’s picking up on the same vibes, 

He shuffles so he’s almost completely pressed up against Rey, from shoulder to hip. Rey isn’t sure if he’s seeking comfort or protection. He’s so tactile it makes her dizzy, but he’s warm and real and she doesn’t move away.

“I think he likes you,” says Baze, voice dry and eyebrow raised.

* * *

In a small room below Maz’s bar she finds an old chest, a innocuous piece of tech and a deluge of memories that she thinks belong to someone else. When she comes too, heart pounding, breath coming out in short gasps Man is standing beside her. Yoda and Obi Wan flank her, their expressions difficult to read.

“This is your destiny,” Maz tells her, hand extended, fingers curled around the tech Rey had discovered.

“These are the first steps of your journey,” Obi Wan says, and she can hear sorrow and regret in his voice.

“Time, it is,” Yoda says.

Rey backs away, her mind crowded with images of blood and water, fear so sharp she can taste it on the back of her tongue.

She closes her eyes and remembers everything she has ever been taught and _runs_.


End file.
